Waiting for Fall, but in the meantime...

Hope everyone's summer is going great and you're doing some fun things.  I've been working in my garden and thought I'd post some pics of what's growing.

Zinnias are my all-time favorite flower, and every summer I try and plant as many as I can. This year I planted from seed, which definitely required some patience as I was anxious to see them bloom. It's amazing how each one looks so different in color and size, even though they're the same variety. The colors are so vivid and beautiful aren't they? They also attract many types of butterflies to the garden, which is another reason I plant them. So pretty!

Thumbelina Zinnias in a wheelbarrow

Planted in a large metal water trough

See the little butterflies?

Black Eyed Susans, Coneflowers, Zinnias, and more!

Russian Sage, Coneflower, and lots of Zinnas blooming

Have a seat and relax!

Part of the small garden in the front of the house

So Stinkin' Cute!

As much as I loathe flying, stinging, buzzing insects that emerge in the Spring, I ADORE being outside. Puttering around my acreage, gardening, creating vignettes with pots and plants and old metal buckets, you get it. Well, I have another passion to share with you; POTTING BENCHES! Not just regular, boring, plain wood, but mismatched, crazy quilt, rustic, quirky, fabulous potting benches! Take a look at some of these:

 

Hmmm looks simple enough

Love all the décor!



Beautiful!

Old window frame, shutters, chicken wire = LOVE

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

I love the aqua fence boards. Simple and cottage-y

I love the imagination that went into building these. I also love that instead of items being taken to the dump and ending up in landfills, that they were repurposed and recycled. That's fantastic. Old fence boards, junky windows and frames, tattered shutters, pallets, scroll-y pieces of leftover ironwork, corbels, trims, whatever...just fabulous!

Spring is just around the corner and I can't wait to start planning a few of my own.

In the Blink of an Eye

Life changes doesn't it? So quickly, just like that. One minute life's one way, then you turn your head and it's another. So really, I just don't know what happened to change me and my mind or how I see things. I'm not sure when or how it happened. I can't believe it myself actually.
It's been 2 years now and soon to be my 3rd summer since we moved here to middle Tennessee from the Pacific Northwest. We were looking to downsize, have property, a place I could keep my 2 horses at home and not board them out, have my own barn, live a quieter, more serene life, away from traffic and congestion. So we sold our beautiful home, quit our jobs, left friends, left the comfortable life we knew, uprooted the life we had for 18 years and traveled 2500 miles across country to somewhere completely foreign and unfamiliar, moving to a rural, country town where we knew no one and had no roots.
We moved into a small home I had found from a previous trip here; 1200 sf. compared to our 2200 sf. home back in the NW. Because of its size, none of our furniture really worked. Downsizing that much was quite an adjustment. So was the weather. That first spring there were so many thunderstorms, tornado watches and warnings, and me not being used to that, was scared to death! Nothing ever came of the storms, thankfully, but having the weather radio alarms go off with messages of possible doom was pretty darn scary!

Over the next year or so, I did lots of home improvement projects to try and make this little house my home. Paint, flooring, new appliances, lighting, you name it, I got it. But it wasn't easy and it didn't take away the loneliness of not having friends or family here. To keep busy, I immersed myself in my little house and in my art, anything and everything to keep going and get involved in life here in my new state.  I worked hard at it. And I cried a lot. I mean a lot. Everyday pretty much for the first year and then some. I missed my old house, my old life. Then I lost my 2 best dogs. I blamed Tennessee for taking them away. I blamed myself too for moving here. I thought if I hadn't have moved here and uprooted them, they'd still be alive and well. I really hated my life here.

And then one day not all that long ago........I opened my eyes and I was in love. In love with my little house that I'd poured so much TLC and love into the past 2 years. So tenderly I was taking care of her and giving her a life is how I felt. All the love and care that she so desperately wanted and deserved and never got. Now she's beautiful, warm and inviting. She glows in a soft aqua color instead of the dull, dreary beige she came to us with. Her shutters are crisp and white, not faded and worn. She wears window boxes of scrolly iron filled with pots of flowers. I'm in love with my 6 acres of property where my horses can graze and I can see them from my windows. And it's all wrapped together with beautiful wood fencing that I always wanted. A place where the cardinals and the doves land and sit and chirp.

I nurture the birds here too, as I did the house. I stopped spraying any sort of pesticide or herbicide on the yard to ensure a safe life for the bees that come to pollinate my gardens, and the birds; turkeys, guinea fowl, finches, jays and all the rest that come to eat bugs from our yard.
I've planted gardens of vegetables and flowers. Perennials that will come back year after year, as I'll be here year after year, and making plans for more projects.

Yes, I've fallen in love with my home here in Tennessee. Instead of sadness and bitterness, I see beauty and peace. A quiet subtle charm. The sun rises are amazing here.

There's so much open land with rolling pastures and history in the old dilapidated barns that remain for generations with family cemetaries where those same generations are laid to rest with family nearby.

There's peace down long unpaved country roads. Charm in the small towns with country diners. No big name restaurants around here. Hearty homemade food; biscuits and grits and country ham. There's true country music and true southern gospel music. I've got Joey and Rory who live just a few miles up the road, along with Marcy Jo's Mealhouse for breakfast and their famous stuffed french toast. Yum!

There's the Duck River for kayaking on a Saturday morning. Mildred's restaurant for the best fried catfish you'll ever eat. Family dinners on Sunday after church. Traditions that are lost in other parts of the country. It's close and personal here, and so so charming. I guess I'm home.

Cottage Gardens and Sheds

Hey everyone! I am so excited about Spring and the planting season ahead, aren’t you? I’ve been dreaming of these sunny green-growing days since December, and now they’re finally upon us.  I can't wait to start flower shopping at all the garden centers around Tennessee to see what they have to offer here.

Around the farm, we've just finished having 4-plank wood fencing done around the house, barn and horse paddocks and it looks wonderful! I feel like I'm finally setting roots here at my new little farm. Take a peek from my front porch, this is my front yard area:

Next, I'm going to put some half whisky barrels purchased from Jack Daniels Distillery on either side of the front gate and filling them with flowers. I'm thinking Black Eyed Susans and some Sweet Potato vines. Love the contrast of colors and those flowers are just big and gorgeous!

Currently I'm working on my garden shed. I bought a rather large one and it was just generic plain jane painted a blah tan color. Soooooooo I painted it a bright sunny yellow and trimmed it in white to make the color pop, and it does! I put some gravel areas with pots of flowers and some old rusty garden tools and battered wood signs, along with other odd old items I had laying around, tossed in a chair or two I got at a local flea market, and now I have a charming area to sit and watch the grass grow, and the horses graze.

I'm just crazy about all these cute sheds you see in the gardening magazines these days like Flea Market Gardening mag. Love love love!  Here’s some pics I spotted that I thought were too cute not to share!

Adorable aren't they?! Just so much more than a place to store your garden tools. I'd love to have a huge one for an artist studio, but that'll be in the future.

Back to gardening: I picked up half a dozen terracotta pots of all sizes from the home center a few days ago and planted basil, tomatoes, lavender, firecracker grass which is this gorgeous color red!, and a variety of different flowers. Lovely!



May All Your Weeds Be Wildflowers

Do April showers REALLY bring May flowers, or just lots of weeds? As I look out my kitchen window and see all my garden areas that were covered in landscape fabric and then barked, I have to wonder how those pesky weeds still manage to come through! It seems in my case, the only thing Spring rain does is grow weeds. Sigh….   So between gaps in the weather this weekend, I got going plucking the weanling weeds while the soil was moist and the pulling was easy.

 
Even if it’s still cold and frosty in your neck of the woods and too early to plant, it’s never too early to plan. I’ve had a great run with the Meadow Sage I planted a couple summers ago. Every year the plants get bigger and never fail to produce lovely purple flowers through September. Between the sage and my lavender plants, I’ve not only got gorgeous color going on, but the smell is heavenly!

I read somewhere that daisy's were weeds!

Or how about working on some yard art while the weather is gloomy outside? Fashion a gate or a privacy screen from an old door. My partner-in-crime of all things creative, just removed a couple of old rustic doors from inside the loft of her barn. Perfect for repurposing. I’m sure she’ll do something totally fantabulous with them! And recently, I got to deconstruct an old house from 1937. I took out all the old panel doors and hardware, odd architectural bits and pieces and even the old sink. I've got plans!